Yevno Azef

Yevno Azef (1869-24 April 1918) was the leader of the SR Combat Organization, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and a double agent for the czarist Okhrana secret police.

Biography
Yevno Azef was born in 1869 in Lyskava, Russian Empire (in present-day Belarus) to a poor Jewish family, and he worked as a journalist and traveling salesman. In 1892, he fled to the German Empire after he embezzled money, and he studied in Germany. The Okhrana secret police recruited him as a police informer, and he joined the SRs in 1894. Azef became the leader of the SR Combat Organization, the autonomous terrorist wing of the SRs, and he organized the assassinations of key people such as Vyacheslav von Plehve in 1904, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia in 1905, and Father Georgy Gapon in 1906. In 1909, his status as an informant was revealed to the SRs, and he escaped retaliation by fleeing to Germany once more. He died in Berlin of kidney failure on 24 April 1918 at the age of 49.